Born and raised in the agriculturally abundant Hudson Valley region of New York, Casey has always held a deep appreciation for food, farming, and local goods. After graduating with a B.A. in Writing and Photography at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY, Casey started her westward journey with the goal of uniting her three greatest passions: food, visual culture, and social change. After a two-year stint in Colorado, this ambition brought Casey to San Francisco where she completed a M.A. in Visual and Critical Studies at California College of the Arts in 2012. At CCA, Casey studied representations of food and farming, ecological philosophy, and the ways in which various concepts surrounding the sustainable food movement are being branded and imaged in American mainstream culture. Casey is currently the Curator at 18 Reasons–Bi Rite Market’s community food and art space–where she organizes six annual exhibitions, as well as, the Bathroom Residency, aligning each exhibition with supplemental arts programming. Casey also works for Bi-Rite Catering. When not scurrying around 18th St, you can find Casey cooking for friends, dreaming of the Adirondacks or chasing the sunshine all the way to the Russian River. Keep an eye out for her all-too-infrequently-updated blog(s): Optical Eater and Gastronomic Grove, as well as, a monthly Editorial piece on Bi-Rite’s blog beginning in January 2013.

About Casey Carroll’s Thesis Project

Seeing Beyond Recycled Imagery: Visualizing New Roots

It is necessary to see through and beyond the recycled and idealized pastoral imagery often presented in mass culture in order to disturb the sanitized story embedded within its image, build a more complete picture of American food production, and give visibility to current efforts attempting to forge a more sustainable future. Via nontraditional sights that express the presence, potential of, and need for a re-imagining of agrarian spaces, such as photographs of urban farming in Detroit and Chicago's, The Plant, a vertical farm and food business incubator, it is possible to grasp the present, encourage further ecological imagination and bridge the rivalry between industry and agrarianism.